Mr. Speaker, there are many authorities in the aerospace field who believe that Manitoba represents the very best of what the aerospace industry has to offer. This gives me an opportunity to remind my colleagues that the province of Manitoba is home to a vibrant, eclectic, diverse aerospace industry of vital importance to the economy of the province of Manitoba. I do not want my colleague from Quebec to misunderstand me. I can say in no uncertain terms that we demand our fair share of any industrial contract associated with the aerospace industry.
Many of us still have a raw memory in our minds of the CF-18 contract, where we were gypped, we were hosed out of our fair share of that vital contract . It upset people in the west to the point where they threw out the government of the day. It spawned a virtual revolution in western Canada, a protest movement. Preston Manning and the Reform Party built a political party around the humiliation and the insult to the people of Manitoba, to the people of the west, because of the government interference that decided to ignore the low bid and ignore the best bid and give that contract to guess where? Quebec. I serve notice here today that we will not tolerate an insult like that again.
This contract awards work based on its merit. It gives the company the choice of where it wants work done. It would be insane to assign work based on ratio and proportion to where the volume of the industry is. How would other jurisdictions ever develop their industry if it automatically had to be allocated as per this insane formula that these guys have concocted?